The Cartel
Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA
by Taylor Branch
"College athletes are not slaves," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch. "Yet to survey the scene…is to catch the unmistakable whiff of the plantation." The Cartel, Branch’s 25,000-word narrative—a portion of which appeared in the October 2011 Atlantic—is his devastating investigation into college sports and the NCAA. In it Branch exposes decades of greed and self-interest and makes clear that the organization is poised to collapse under the weight of its hypocrisy.
"In eviscerating the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Mr. Branch provides ample evidence that our "student-athletes" are themselves lacking in their rights as American citizens. They are, he says, the "heir[s] to Dred Scott.""
